Nuremberg

It is said that history is written by the victors. The film, Nuremberg (2025), bears that out. Even though Justice Robert Jackson, the American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Nazi trial, compromises its integrity and thus breaches due process by pressuring Douglas Kelley, the psychiatrist assigned to the Nazi prisoners (most notably Goring), to obtain and pass on the defense’s strategy to Jackson, which Kelley does, the trial is presented nonetheless as legitimate and the Nazi prisoners as even deserving an unfair trial. Nevertheless, nations governed by the rule of law are never justified in putting on corrupt trials, or skewing them to push a particular ideology. The film itself is skewed to highlight the Nazi crimes against the Jews at the expense of delving more into the distinctly war crimes even though those crimes were just as important in the charges in the actual trial.

The full essay is at "Nuremberg."

The Courts Go After Gerrymandering: Deconstructing a Conflict-of-Interest

In the U.S., the boundaries of both federal (e.g., U.S. House of Representatives) and state legislative districts are redrawn every ten years after the census to “ensure that each district contains roughly the same number of people.”[1] Both major political parties in state legislatures “often remap districts to favor themselves, either by cramming opposition voters into a single district or by dividing them so they are the majority in fewer districts.”[2] I contend that a simple majority vote is problematic, given the irresistible temptation to redraw the districts for partisan advantage rather than merely to take account of changes in population.

The full essay is at "Gerrymandering."

1. Michael Wines, “Judges Find Wisconsin Redistricting Unfairly Favored Republicans,” The New York Times, November 21, 2016.

2. Ibid.

Police Snatching Property: A Conflict of Interest While American Federalism Sleeps

The U.S. Justice Department halted its adopted-forfeitures program in early 2015 out of a sense that state and local law-enforcement agencies had been using the federal program to retain a greater portion of seized property, including cash, than state laws permit. Asset forfeiture had grown since the 1980s largely as a strategy in combatting drug traffickers, yet the agencies themselves benefited in being able to spend the cash. Besides this conflict of interest, the federal-state dynamic here demonstrates federalism in action, though perhaps not as strongly as the system of government allows.

The full essay is at “Police Snatching Property.”